The Brewers' secret weapon? A good night's sleep

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy’s Brewers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

PHOENIX – After 80 pressure-packed appearances in last year’s regular season and postseason, Abner Uribe’s recovery plan was simple: Sleep it off.

“I love sleep,” the 25-year-old Brewers reliever said.

He’s not kidding. Uribe professes to get eight to nine hours of sleep every night, then a three-hour nap in the afternoon. Even for a modern version of Major League Baseball, in which late-night partying has been largely replaced by sleep trackers and recovery bands, that’s a lot of shut-eye.

“Sleep is the best thing in the world,” Uribe said. “You have to figure out what is good for your body, and nobody has to tell you how to sleep. I love to sleep, so I sleep all the time.”

He’s not the only one. A random survey of the Brewers’ clubhouse found only a handful of players who would admit to getting less than seven hours of sleep on a regular basis, including catcher William Contreras, who gets by on five to six hours during the regular season despite his heavy workload, and closer Trevor Megill, who has a 2-year-old daughter and is happy when he gets six.

Most teammates sleep much more. Few, however, spend as much time snoozing as Uribe and outfielder Garrett Mitchell, who each say they regularly get 11 hours of sleep – or more – in the 24 hours following a typical regular season night game.

“I just like to sleep,” said Mitchell, who was diagnosed as Type 1 diabetic at age 9 and had to learn to listen to his body. “I’ll set an alarm for 10 or 11 a.m., and if I sleep to it, great. A bomb could go off and I’ll probably sleep through it.”

Former AL Cy Young Award winner Zack Greinke was that way. During his season-plus with the Brewers, you’d often find his two feet sticking out from his locker while he napped sitting up behind hanging clothes. Nowadays, players have a more comfortable place to nap, since the Brewers built a nap room inside the clubhouse complex at American Family Field in Milwaukee.

Former shortstop Willy Adames was a regular of the nap room. Now you’ll occasionally find Jacob Misiorowski there.

“In college I started taking naps and felt really good,” Misiorowski said. “So I kept rolling with it.”

Teams take this subject quite seriously. Among the myriad meetings taking place in clubhouses across Major League Baseball this spring are seminars on recovery, including the benefits of proper sleep. Players track sleep with wearable tech, such that outfielder Blake Perkins, rather than answer in general terms about his habits, opened his cell phone and answered to the minute. He’s averaged precisely seven hours and 23 minutes of sleep per night over the past six months.

“I’m fine with not getting a lot of sleep for a few days as long as I can make it up,” Perkins said. “I’m a believer in ‘catching up’ on sleep. It works for me.”

Christian Yelich aims for a solid eight hours, though he doesn’t track it. Pitching newcomer Kyle Harrison is consistent at eight to nine hours and used to track it, but lost his Oura ring and needs a replacement, since he’s sensing the value of good sleep more and more as he gains experience in the game. Ditto for shortstop prospect Cooper Pratt, who said the Brewers once gave their Minor Leaguers sleep trackers and logged the results. Nowadays, Pratt gets eight to nine hours every night without the trouble of tracking.

Another infield prospect, Jett Williams, adopted a more systematic approach while sidelined by a right wrist injury in 2024 with the Mets. With little better to do, Williams began reading about nutrition and recovery, educating himself about the benefits of simple things like getting good sleep. Now he tracks everything from calorie intake to calorie burn and sleep. He aims for eight and a half hours at the minimum.

“Some of it is just trial and error,” Williams said. “I’m sure my parents would say I went overboard. Like, I only drink water or sparkling water, I don’t drink out of plastic bottles anymore. Whenever I was bored during rehab, I looked up stuff and figured out how I can treat my body the best.

“Whatever effort you put into your body, you get the best out.”

That’s Uribe’s philosophy. Club officials warned that a reliever doesn't feel the effects of a heavy workload until the following season, but Uribe has felt great so far. He’s aiming to make the NL All-Star team this season after being denied last year, and shrugged off talk of a closer conundrum with Megill, saying the ninth inning will work itself out.

“Same Abner,” Uribe said. “People say when you do something good, you don’t have to change. So I’m not going to change anything.”

Uribe can always amend that strategy later. If he does, he would sleep on it first.